Lord Lucas (Con)

My Lords, I very much support what the noble Lord, Lord Hacking, has said, as the Minister will know from my numerous amendments later in the Bill, which I look forward to discussing with officials. I have three amendments in this group. Amendment 204 inquires after the process in subsection (3) describing condition A. I hope that the Minister can describe today what the Government’s reasoning is in making this change. When it comes to what the process is going to be and whether there is the capability in system to do it, I am happy to leave that to discussions with officials. Amendment 210 questions the meaning of “without undue delay”. If the hereditary Peers Bill was amended to say that we were leaving without undue delay, I would regard that as a plus. Such phrases in the mouths of government tend to mean quite a long time. I would have thought that in these circumstances, where the education of a child is concerned, something tighter might be advisable. Amendment 221 says that, if this is what it looks like, the parent really needs access to a tribunal. If a local authority is on song and doing things quickly and it all goes smoothly and fairly, fine, but there are a lot of local authorities—my noble friend Lord Wei named the most notoriously worst of them—where this is not the case, often just temporarily because of staff changes or short-staffing. In those circumstances, the parent needs some recourse, because it is the child that matters.